Be Still and March

IT WAS MONUMENTAL. Can we all agree on that? I would even go so far as to say it was momentous.

I wish we could separate the event from the issues that prompted it for just a minute. Of course that’s not possbile; the matter is too emotionally charged.

As if providentially, my watch just pinged, reminding me it’s time to take a few deep breaths. Seriously. Join me. Deep inhale… Exhale. Six more. My watch now tells me my heartrate is at 61 BPM. That’s down from 318 when I started writing this after spending a few minutes on Facebook.

Why does a love for the First Amendment mean you want the Second stricken and vice versa? I love them both. I am happy we have both, and the others as well. I wouldn’t go as far as I heard one citizen opine: “I think the president should switch them and make the Second Amendment number 1, because without guns we wouldn’t have any other freedoms.” But, he has the freedom to say it.

For me and for this essay, I just want to celebrate the essence of the "March for Our Lives" for a few minutes and words. The “essence”?

Sometimes the most wonderful outcomes of something like this are things that were unexpected and unintended. I worked with teenagers for more than 30 years, and I have to say that any time you can get them to raise their eyes from their smartphones, open their ears and pay attention, something good can happen. It’s an opportunity to awaken a bit, to march on from apathy, narcissism and naivete´.

When you make a poster, join the march, become a part of the conversation, you begin to form a worldview and to be a part of something bigger than yourself. Maybe you take a giant step up Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs from safety and security needs, to belonging needs, to esteem needs, to self-actualization.

I know this from intimate experience of working with hundreds of teens and from my own personal experience.

Similar to the highly charged arguments of the day that fill our common air like so much smog, the causes I marched for and against in my day were equally divisive and misunderstood. I wrote about it in a post a few years back. Here’s a snippet:

The Kent State shootings occurred at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. The Ohio National Guard fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds on unarmed college students on Monday, May 4, 1970, killing four students and wounding nine others.

As a result, student protests were organized across the country. Hundreds of universities cancelled classes and locked down buildings. I was proud to be a part of the event at OBU. But as we sat through the day and overnight on the OBU Oval, wearing black arm bands, discussing the state of our country and world, and wondering whether we could make a difference, it all seemed a little silly and isolated. Maybe we did make some difference though. At least I was different. I wanted to DO something. I still do.

Don't skip this part. Back then, no doubt I had delusions of importance and occasional altruism. The fact is I was pretty self-absorbed; oh, not in a Justin Bieber brand of narcissism kind of way, but in a way that dictates at least this: for all of those who knew me back then, please forgive me. Maybe the Washington Elite was right--maybe I was too stupid to vote at 18. The dean of students who encouraged me not to return to OBU for my sophomore year certainly would agree with that.

My intent here is not to romanticize those days, but if I have, well... After all this was my first Coming-of-Age. It should be a bit romantic, right?

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There was a recurring experience in youth ministry that I dreaded and hated. I still do. It is the experience of seeing the passion and enthusiasm of youth crushed or belittled. Let me try to explain with a couple of examples:

Every summer I would return home from summer camp with a group of students recommitted and energized to make a difference. I knew that soon they would be met with an indifference that would suck the wind from their sails. There would be patronization and diminishment and “reality”.

Another example. Numerous times in my years of youth ministry there would be a young woman with a strong sense of calling to leadership in the church. I knew full-well that the predominate attitude among baptists was that the role of women was to be a submissive wife to their husband—not a leader in the church. I hated the moment when they this ugly fact would become real for them.

When you pat an energized young person on the head and dismiss them, you plant a seed of cynicism, hopefully seeds of determination and vision will grow strong and choke those out.

You may see their efforts as being misguided, even dangerous, but I am telling you there is value in the experience for them. And who knows, maybe they will survive, get in line, register to vote and fight for a more acceptable cause someday. 

Look at me: I’m still a rebellious liberal, but I’m a functional liberal. And while I love the First Amendment and the Second, and the rest, I believe there is a higher calling, a higher freedom than any a govenment can legislate. It goes something like this:

Act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God. --from the Bible, Micah 6:8, sort of.

I could write that on a poster and march around the capital, the courthouse, the church, and the marketplace; if only I wasn’t so tired and cynical. In the meantime...

70 Times 7

I FIRMLY BELIEVE that there are spiritual realities that are beyond human understanding. Here, here’s an example: “…God’s peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand…” [from Philipians 4:6 The Living Bible]

Of course that doesn’t stop us from trying to understand, to seek meaning, to boil it all down to an unequivocal absolute. The danger there is that we might strip away the beauty, the mystery and the wonder. We’re left with someone’s interpretation, and in our desire to comprehend the incomprehensible, we settle for the opinion or worldview of another; for better or worse.

Forgiveness. That’s a tough one. In my sixty-some years of Sunday school, sermons, and scripture reading; not to mention prayers for wisdom and simple answers, I still don’t understand Forgiveness. I believe it is right up there with Peace in being “far more wonderful than the human mind can understand.”

Jesus was pretty clear on the subject, at least regarding the relentlessness of Forgiveness.

Then Peter came to him and asked, “Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?”

“No, not seven times,” Jesus replied, “but seventy times seven!
—Matthew 18:21-22 New Living Translation

So, what is it? Exoneration, making amends, mercy, absolution, forgetting about it? Let’s just say it’s complicated. Here’s an example:

One of my favorite singer/songwriters is Brandi Carlile. I have all her albums except for her newest which is to be released on February 16. I have heard the album and it is amazing. It’s called, “By The Way, I Forgive You”.

In learning more about the album, I’ve learned more about Brandi. As a part of the album’s release, she and a couple of her bandmates decided to talk about their forgiveness stories and encourage others to do so as well, even going so far as to use social media and the hastag #ByTheWayIForgiveYou to provide a forum of sorts for sharing.

One of the stories from the Twitter thread was in video form, a young lady granting forgiveness posthumously to her father who died of alcoholism when she was only eleven. It is all extremely moving and affirms the fact that the process of forgiving and being forgiven is deeper than our understanding.

It all caused me to think about my personal encounters with the concept. Without a doubt, if the thing is a dichotomy with Forgiving on one end and Being Forgiven on the other, by far I have been on the Need-to-be-Forgiven end than I have the Need-to-Forgive side. 

Back to Brandi Carlile and her story of the gnarly, knotty, beautiful, spiritual affair of Forgiveness. Her story rang so true and relevant for me. Here, in her words:

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I would like to forgive Pastor Tim.

I forgive you for deciding not to baptize me when I was a teenager for being gay.

It was not so much that you wouldn’t or couldn’t do it because of the tenets put in place by the baptist rules and traditions, but because you waited until all my family and friends were present and waiting in the pews for the ceremony.

I don’t believe you did it to humiliate me - I think you struggled with the decision and simply ran out of time... I think you probably still do struggle with it.

I’d like you to know that I still love you and that I understand we’re all on a journey together, trying our best to walk through the world with honor and dignity - but what I want you to know most of all is that you did not damage my faith. Not in god, not in humanity and not in myself.

The experience inspired me to help other gay kids and my spiritual LGBTQ brothers and sisters come to terms with the disappointments they’ve endured on the rugged road to peace and acceptance. I think you’d appreciate that process.

You’ve helped far more people than you’ve hurt and you helped me too.

Thank you

xobc

#bythewayiforgiveyou

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I don’t know Pastor Tim, but I do know “Pastor Tim” in the sense that he could be so many other well-meaning, God-fearing humans making human messes in God’s name. I would love to visit with him to see how he feels all these years later about that day, about Brandi’s amazing grace-full statement of forgiveness. I hope he feels somewhat healed by it and that he can hear her saying that she is somehow healed by it too.

Notice that she seems to have come to terms with the understanding that he might have made the decision based on doctrine, dogma, or reductionist religion, but the thing that hurt her most was waiting until the moment she was to take a step of spiritual obedience into the waters, with her family and friends gathered to celebrate with her, before he said, No. Not now, not like this.

And then her words, baptized with grace, “I’d like you to know that I still love you and that I understand we’re all on a journey together, trying our best to walk through the world with honor and dignity…”

Maybe that’s what forgiveness is: understanding. understanding we’re all on a journey. a journey together. trying our best.

#bythewaypleaseforgiveme

because like Jesus affirmed to his Father while on the cross, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

For more on Brandi’s project click here.

The Stat Sheet

I’ve noticed a turn of phrase used by sportscasters and commentators these days, they speak of players that “do a lot of things that don’t show up on the stat sheet.”

If you watch OKC Thunder basketball games on TV you’ll hear them make this comment about guys like André Roberson. He doesn’t score many points at all, and in fact when he shoots he seldom even hits the rim. Yet, he’s a starter. Why? Because his contribution doesn’t show up on the stat sheet. No one on the Thunder team works harder, gives more or defines team-player more than André. His defensive effort is relentless.

Our culture, more than ever, however, prizes and praises those that light up the stat sheets, and not just among athletes. We have data and stat sheets on everything. Even our current POTUS loves to brag about his own stat sheet. Metrics matter; to some.

I use a web service called Squarespace to publish this blog. In the Squarespace tools are analytics where you can see how your blog is doing in terms of traffic to the site. I seldom look at the reports because I’m not trying to reach the masses. I’m too out of touch to be a masses kind of guy, and anyway, at the risk of sounding like the grapes are sour, the masses are a fickle lot.

However, the other day I got an email from Squarespace telling me about a new analytical tool where I can see geographically where the readers of About POPS are located. Now that’s just interesting. I assumed that there would be two dots: one at my house and one at my mother’s house.

Boy, was I surprised. Here’s the latest report:

I’m assuming that all the visitors from China on down with the exception of maybe France and Australia, are probably dark web hacker types out to steal my identity and dignity.

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Let’s talk about Christmas, the birthday of a King, the type that had to have been a huge disappointment to those expecting a big stat sheet kind of king. A big-league, loud, in your face, flamboyant kind of dude. (I started to add that they expected one of those tell-it-like-it-is kinda guys, but He was that and it turns out they didn’t really want to hear-it-like-it-is; and we don’t either.)

Remember the Ray Stevens song, the one with the chorus that went (asking about Jesus):

Would He wear a pinky ring, would He drive a brand new car?
Would His wife wear furs and diamonds, would His dressin' room have a star?
If He came back tomorrow, well there's somethin' I'd like to know
Could ya tell me, would Jesus wear a Rolex on His television show?

Without a doubt, my favorite painting of Mary and Jesus is the one painted by Caravaggio called “Madonna di Loreto”.

I love it because of the humanity of it. The realness. The rawness. Two pilgrims, not bearing gold, frankinscense, or myrrh; just two people, who likely won’t show up on any stat sheet other than the one thats says they were born and they died, kneeling in a moment of awe of a baby who would one day be their savior. And, He was a lot like them… human, poor, frail and humble; just the way God planned it, and of whom it is written:

Jesus Christ, Who, being in very nature God,
        did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 
        but made himself nothing,
        taking the very nature of a servant,
        being made in human likeness. 
And being found in appearance as a man,
        he humbled himself
        and became obedient to death—
        even death on a cross!

Philippians 2:6-8
        

The other day, prompted by a friend, I wrote this in my journal:

Christmas—it has been:
Commercialized
Sentimentalized
Romanticized
And now politicized
If only it could be realized.

To culturally update Ray Stevens song: Would Jesus care how many Twitter followers He had? Maybe he’s looking for a different kind of follower—the kind that doesn’t always show up on the stat sheet.

PEACE Everyone across the USA and beyond, and to you 11 Aussies.

Checking The Boxes

Call it: #1 gratuitous bragging, or #2 unnecessary roughness, or #3 cynicism.

I am: #1 a proud Pops, #2 an old man that has earned my turn to speak without a filter (I however use my blog rather than Twitter like other old, filterless dudes.), and #3 Yes, I am a cynic.

One of our Grand-Girls recently came home with a written report from the principal’s office. YIKES… The title at the top of the form however, was: “Positve Office Referral.” I had no idea such a thing existed. My parents never received a report like this from my principal or any other employee of the school system.

Of course I’m proud! And yes I am bragging. If I could find one of those bumper stickers that says, “My Grand-Kids Are Smart,” I would use it.

I have redacted much of the glowing report, but I wanted to share the checklist portion of the form. Notice that she checked ALL the boxes. 

But this essay is only partially about bragging. Just for fun (or to deepen the collective depression) pick a politician, any politician, up to and including the one currently occupying the “highest office in the land”. Now, check all the boxes that apply.

What if we were to make a pact that in any forthcoming election we would only vote for candidates that could check half these boxes?

For more than thirty years, I worked with teenagers in local churches. Then and now, young people hold a very dear place in my heart. When it comes to youth, my cynicism melts away. I am an eternal optimist in this area.

Looking back over those years and those kids, I hope that I was honest with them and realistic and straightforward. One of the things I loved about that role was trying to walk with them as they navigated adolescence. Sort of a guiding principle for me came from a verse in the Book of Luke, 2:52. I liked it a lot because it is the only verse in the Bible that says anything about Jesus as a teenager. The Bible pretty much skips the years of his life between 12 and 30. 

The verse says: “Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.” I’m not a theologian; never have been, never will be. I did not go to seminary and the only Greek I know is the guy that runs the gyros food truck (flam on the snare, crash cymbal).

My take on the verse is that Jesus grew in four ways: intellectually (in wisdom), physically (in stature), spiritually  (in favor with God), and socially (in favor with man). And there you have a balanced picture of adolescence.

One of the crazy parts of the whole adolscence journey is figuring out what is up with these changing bodies? (I have similar questions as my 60-something year old body is in full mutiny.)

If you will recall, getting to know and figuring out what to do with these uncertian physical urges was a challange for teens.(And apparently for old politicans too).

As I hoped to convey, there is also inside of us a spiritual curiosity and life worth exploring. It’s just that it doesn’t demand attention like the physical part does. So as a youth minister you try to creatively help, or offer tools, or encouragement. Sometimes I did more harm than good, I’m certain. 

I do know this: as someone who wanted to help teens develop their worldview, as they began to clarify and define their values, you always hoped there was a part of their culture that was solid, that would support them. When President Clinton did what he did to Monica Lewinsky and then went on national TV, wagged his finger at us and lied to us, I hated that. He was undermining culture, kicking stones from the foundation; in my opinion. I hated the plague of sexual abuse of young people by church leaders.

When the current POTUS, and proud owner of his own illicit sexual exploits, says that he wants to see Roy Moore, an unrepentent pervert who took advantage of teenaged girls, elected to the United States Senate because he needs his vote; our culture is undermined. We become more base as a nation and as a civilization. And by “base” I mean more unprincipled, with squishy values. And even more tragically, there is that misguided, ugly thread within the “evangelical church” that is supporting this twisted reality as well. 

And we wonder why young people today mistrust institutions.

I am so grateful that my Grand-Kids have amazing, loving, grounded parents, solid spiritual communities and schools where a little girl’s teacher and principal will give them a report that affirms virtue.

This same little girl said something to me a few days ago about the president of the United States. I asked her if she knew who the president was? She said, “Abraham Lincoln?” I couldn’t bear to tell her otherwise.

How long will it take to see justice?

"How long? Not long because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." -- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

I hope he’s right.